I loved the river, and would find a quiet place on the bank where I would weave small boats from reeds and twigs and sail them in the shallows. Or I would just sit for a long time, silent and still, watching the birds and listening to their song, and that of the whirring insects and the wind hissing in the leaves. Sitting there, silently listening, I seemed to fade away into the undergrowth and lose awareness of myself. My body and my external life floated away from me and I became a part of the riverbank, another animal life among so many others, no more or less important.
As the weather grew warm, I would see the occasional swimmer making his way down the river. I would sit hidden in the long grass, transfixed. The swimmers were like other river animals, like larger otters; I didn’t relate to them as people. On warm days I would sit with my eyes on the water, looking out for them, and when one appeared I would creep quietly down to the water, as though I might scare them off if I made a sound. I would lean out over the water and watch them glide past, craning my neck to keep them in view for as long as possible. I drank up the sight of their sleek motion with a fierce envy that originated in my flesh and muscles rather than my mind. I would feel the beginnings of tears sting my eyes.
I wanted to rush out and join them, and indeed in my imagination I was already out there, swimming with them; water gurgling past me, cool against my face and with soft strings of bubbles rising from my lips like pearls. As the days passed I became determined to swim. I began to study the motions that the passing swimmers made with their arms and head, and practised them while lying face down on the grass. After a few days of this, I undressed and walked naked and shivering into the water, which was colder than seemed possible. I found a place with a partly submerged tree trunk that extended out into the river, and which I could hold on to as I ventured out into the deeper water.
At first, the touch of the water frightened me, but gradually I became accustomed to it. After a few days I was even quite comfortable with the sensation of the water lapping around my chin and lips, and even of being submerged, but I had great difficulty launching myself from my standing position into a horizontal one. This took many days of practice, and the unfamiliar orientation confused me at first, expelling the breath from my body like a reflex.
My difficulty was that, although I had learned from the passing swimmers to move my arms around and around like the wheels of a mill, I had no idea what to do with my legs. All I could see of the swimmers’ legs was a fizzing wake that seemed to propel them forward. My legs were the weakest part of me. At first, when I tried to kick off from the riverbed they would drift behind me like a heavy train, floating for a short while but then slowly sinking down to the sandy bottom again. I experimented with different movements; I tried rotating my legs as though on a bicycle, in time with my arms, or rotating my feet in tiny circles. It was extremely difficult for me to control my right leg, which was only a soft, spongy thing, lacking any muscle. Eventually I hit upon the notion of kicking my legs up and down, and I practised this motion first holding on to the tree trunk, which had become like a friend to me, its knots and footholds familiar and reassuring. Over the weeks of that summer I slowly learned to propel myself along.
Soon I could even swim few strokes underwater, my belly gliding close above the riverbed. I came up laughing; it was like flying, and for the first time in my life I did not feel restricted in space. I floated and rolled around in the river’s grip, and my limbs, glowing white through the dark water, no longer seemed to be objects of pity.
Hearing the clock in the Old Town square strike was the signal for me to return to school, and the sound of it was more awful to me than any early-morning alarm bell. The realities of my life came rushing back to me. Reluctantly, slowly, I would swim ashore; school, my mother, every hardship I endured seemed to be waiting for me on that riverbank. I would dress hastily and hurry back to school, late, my hair still wet, my toes inside my socks ringed with river mud.
So many years later, in my early-morning walking to the post office, I was able to regain the same sense of freedom that being in the river that long-ago summer had given me, and for at least a short while I could lose myself in the world. On those walks I was no longer anyone. I breathed the air, I felt it on my face and my hands, my feet moved along the cobblestones, and that was all. Only when the walls of the post office came into view did I come back into myself, and my life opened its wings again and enclosed me. The dull sound of the heavy double doors swinging closed behind me was like the sound of the clock chiming in my childhood, a grim herald of what it meant to be me.
After arriving at the office, I could usually count on having at least an hour to myself before the other workers began to arrive, and even then it was rare that anyone would bother me for another hour after that. If I was writing, I would allow myself fifteen minutes or so to read the newspaper or a review in a journal and drink a morning cup of coffee, before commencing work. At that time I had finished the travelogue, and Schopenhauer was done with, so I was casting feebly about for some new ideas.
On this particular morning I was preoccupied more than usual with Anja’s absence. I was certain that she was back in Prague. The last two times that I had stationed myself outside the house, there had been distinct movement within the apartment. I was sure of it. The arrangements of the curtain over the window had also changed. The concierge continued to dismiss me, but I thought I could discern some shift in his expression, another possible signal of the Železnýs’ return.
The idea that Anja might be there but that I could not reach her was maddening, and made me feverish and dizzy. Was the concierge barring me from the apartment out of spite? I regretted calling on Anja so persistently; the concierge perhaps felt he was protecting her from a nuisance, or perhaps even violence. For the first time Klopstock seemed a sympathetic figure to me, and it was with shame that I noted our similarities.
I was interrupted in my musings by a knock at the office door. No one had ever disturbed me at this hour before. It was disorienting. There was a long silence, and I began to wonder if I might have imagined the knock, or if the sound had come from somewhere else. But then it came again. I felt irrationally fearful, as if I were about to be visited by some supernatural presence.
‘Come in,’ I said.
Theodor came into the room. He was the last person I was expecting. I leaned back in the chair, relieved, and waved him to a chair, but he declined with a shake of his head. It was then I saw his angry face.
‘Three hundred and fifty-three crowns and twenty-two heller,’ he said. He had not taken off his hat. He stood in the centre of the room with his arms folded. He looked furious but also, I thought, confused.
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘The cheque.’ He must have spoken to Franz about it. I was thinking fast. The possibility of claiming to have lost it flashed through my mind, but I could not remember if I had signed anything at the bank when collecting it, and Theodor might have checked. Perhaps the best thing was just to admit it. ‘Yes, that was for expenses, isn’t that right?’
‘The cheque was for Franz,’ said Theodor.
‘Yes, but you had it made out to cash, and I thought, well, it must be expenses.’ My voice hung in the air. ‘Karlsbad, all those museums. And, you know, I was the one who wrote the whole thing up. Every word!’